


what's in a name?

by flamebirds



Series: one shots [6]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Inexplicably adopt an entirely new writing style & give no reason as to why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21974215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamebirds/pseuds/flamebirds
Summary: She was named after her grandmother, Elizabeth 'Betsy' Kane. She's Mary Elisabeth Kane, the third of her name. The first is the aforementioned old lady that Betty never got to meet. The second is her cousin, Beth, her amazing cousin who's fun and light and sunshine and dead, dead, dead.
Series: one shots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901311
Comments: 9
Kudos: 9





	what's in a name?

_Betty._ Let's take her as she is, without her full name and all of its connotations and connections. Let's forgo Bette for a moment and focus on her, on the scared child pretending with every fibre of her being that she is _brave, brave, brave._ Let's focus on the little girl; the one that looks far to small to be flying across Gotham rooftops, the one that's just a spark about to turn into an inferno. She's still growing, still forming, but she's close to being complete.

Now let's take in her surname — _Kane._ So many things, so many people, are tied to that name. The Batwoman, Spyral, monsters and heroes and villains, all mixed into a bag. You never know which one you're going to be until it is far, far too late to stop it.

Betty Kane likes to think she's a hero. She likes to think that she's helping people, that she and Bat-Woman are making the world a better place with each passing night.

It isn't until she's twenty-two and Bette now, the Bette that killed Betty, that she'll realize that wasn't the whole truth. She'll be twenty-two and she'll think she's the villain of the story.

But for now, for Betty, she's the good guy. She hasn't realized how acutely cursed her name is.

She was named after her grandmother, Elizabeth 'Betsy' Kane. She's Mary Elisabeth Kane, the third of her name. The first is the aforementioned old lady that Betty never got to meet. The second is her cousin, Beth, her amazing cousin who's fun and light and sunshine and _dead, dead, dead._

She's named after a dead woman and she shares that with a dead girl. Its followed her whole life, that spectre of death, always inching ever closer. It stalks her every move, hidden in her footprints, her shadow, her smile. It follows her everywhere and it _takes, takes, takes._

It started with her cousin and it comes for her aunt when she's a child and like Beth, like so many people she will come to know, it's a lie. It's a lie and it's manipulation and it works. It always does.

Death comes next for Betty. She takes her name, the name always associated with her aunt and she kills it. She destroys sweet, innocent Betty and she replaces her with Bette, the vapid valley girl who's more concerned with her next tennis trophy than anything else. Betty and Bat-Girl become corpses, skeletons she hides in the very back of her closet and Bette _rises, rises, rises._

She's not the same. Bette is an entirely different entity and it takes her longer than she'd care to admit to fall back into heroics. It's her family's legacy _(it's her family's downfall)_ and there was only so much time she could spend running before it caught up to her.

Bat-Girl is dead and from the ashes rises Flamebird. Its a name tied with rebirth; with life and still with death, _always, always, always_ with death. She can't escape that but maybe she can twist it into something bearable, something she can stand to look at in the mirror.

Flamebird is a wildfire. She jumps from place to place and she never settles. She tries not to get attached, too, but that never happens. The people she meets, the heroes she spends her days and nights with dig their place into her heart and they give her hope. They rise her up and she feels like she's finally complete, finally whole.

But she's still Bette Kane, still Mary Elisabeth, still the one that death follows. It takes and it takes and it takes and it leaves her a ruin in its wake. The ones she loves are gone and she's the only left again, more of a ghost than a girl at this point.

She doesn't quit. Betty might have, Bat-Girl might have, but Bette killed them to be stronger. She sculpted someone that would bounce back, no matter what happened. She made her strong and she pretends with every fibre of her being that she's not _weak, weak, weak._

She returns to Gotham, death following in her wake. She digs up old secrets and she finds that dead is not what it once was. People who were gone can come back and maybe, some shouldn't. Some should stay six feet under, where they can no longer harm another soul. She won't let harm come to anyone else, will fight for peace until her dying breath, but under the cover of darkness, she'll find herself wishing that people like Kathy stayed gone, stayed dead, stayed away so everybody else would be safe.

Then the morning light will hit and Bette will be back, _smiling, smiling, smiling_ and pretending that everything is fine, that she doesn't ache down to her very bones.

She'll lie for however long it takes. She'll lie and manipulate to keep the people she loves from worrying, lets them think that she's fine and that she's not _burning, burning, burning._ Kate will ask her how she is and she will smile, tell her she's fine. She won't mention wanting to tear the cosmos apart for her lost friends. She won't mention how unfair it is, that Kate got her sister back, but Bette will _never_ have her family returned to her.

Her smile is her weapon and Bette is an expert at using it. The Hook mauls her, leaves her for dead, and she pushes it through it. She ignores his whispers in the back of her skulls and she carries on, smiling all the time, until Kate and Bruce and everybody around her stops worrying. She's _Bette_ and she will not stop, not for anyone or anything.

Betty, Bat-Girl, Mary Elisabeth, Flamebird, Hawkfire, all of them, make Bette _fucking_ Kane. She's the one that would tear apart the cosmos _(she's the one that could)._ She's the one that people should fear. She's fire, burning, seething, loving, loathing, all at once, all in a beautiful symphony. She's the hero of her own story and that's _enough, enough, enough._


End file.
